Benedict Swingate Calvert | |
---|---|
![]() Benedict Swingate Calvert painted by John Wollaston c1753, five years after his marriage to Elizabeth Calvert. Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. | |
Judge of the Land Office | |
In office 1755 –May 13, 1777 | |
Succeeded by | St George Peale |
Personal details | |
Born | January 27,1722 England |
Died | January 9,1788 65) Maryland | (aged
Spouse | Elizabeth Calvert |
Children | 13,including: Eleanor Calvert George Calvert |
Parent | Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore (father) |
Residence | Mount Airy |
Occupation | planter,politician |
Benedict Swingate Calvert (January 27,1722 – January 9,1788) was a planter,politician and a Loyalist in Maryland during the American Revolution. He was the son of Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore,the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland (1699–1751). His mother's identity is not known,though one source speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg,Countess of Walsingham. As he was illegitimate,he was not able to inherit his father's title or estates,which passed instead to his half brother Frederick Calvert,6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Benedict Calvert spent most of his life as a politician,judge and planter in Maryland,though Frederick,by contrast,never visited the colony. Calvert became wealthy through proprietarial patronage and became an important colonial official,but he would lose his offices and his political power,though not his land and wealth,during the American Revolution.
Calvert was born Benedict Swinket in England on January 27,1722, [1] the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore,proprietary governor of the Province of Maryland. His birth year has been variously given as 1724,1730 and 1732,but the grave stone in the floor of the chancery of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Croom,Maryland gives the date of January 27 1722. [1]
His mother's identity is not known. H. S. Lee Washington,writing in the New England Historic Genealogical Society Register in July 1950,speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg,Countess of Walsingham, [2] [3] [4] [5] the daughter of George I of Great Britain and his mistress,Melusine von der Schulenburg,Duchess of Kendal. [6]
According to a letter of Benedict's daughter-in-law Rosalie Stier Calvert dated 10 June 1814,Calvert's mother had been a woman "of the highest rank in England". [7]
In around 1736 or 1737, [8] the young Benedict was sent to the Calverts' proprietary colony of Maryland,which in the mid 18th century was still a somewhat sparsely settled,largely rural society. In 1730 the population of Annapolis was just 776. [9] [8] The population of colony was 120,000 at the time.
According to the letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert,Benedict was personally escorted to Annapolis on a frigate commanded by Admiral Edward Vernon,though this seems unlikely. [10] [11] [12] On arrival,the boy was placed in the care of Dr George Steuart (1700–1784),an Edinburgh-trained physician and a political ally of the ruling Calvert family. [13] [14] Steuart provided the boy with a tutor,the Italian Onorio Razzolini, [15] the first immigrant of Italian descent to hold public office in the North American colonies. [16]
Benedict Calvert grew up at Steuart's "old-fashioned house" on Francis St in Annapolis,just off State Circle and a short walk from the Maryland State House. At least once he was beaten by a town bully;his attacker was brought before the County Court and whipped. [8] In 1738 he witnessed a will under his childhood name of Swingate (or "Swinket"),and it is likely that at this time his father's identity was not widely known;later he would take his father's name. [8] Dr Steuart's house was a short distance from the home of Benedict Calvert's second cousin,Elizabeth Calvert (1731–1788),whom he would later marry. Elizabeth was the daughter of Maryland Governor Captain Charles Calvert and his wife Rebecca Gerard,both of whom died young,leaving Elizabeth a wealthy heiress. [8]
Through his family connections Calvert was able to benefit from considerable proprietarial patronage,at least until the American Revolution in 1776 ended proprietarial rule in Maryland. In 1745 he was appointed by his father the Patuxent district customs collector and naval officer,a post which permitted him to retain a portion of the customs fees. He also served as an Annapolis council member. [8] [17]
Benedict Calvert would never return to England;nor would he meet his father again. Some time before his death in 1751,Lord Baltimore wrote to his son,offering advice on marriage:
Pray do not think of Marrying until you hear from me having some things to Propose for you,much for your advantage,and believe me I will never force Your Inclination,Only Propose what I think will make you most Happy,Afterwards Leave it to Your own Determination. [17]
On April 21,1748,Benedict and his cousin Elizabeth Calvert were married in St Ann's Church by the Reverend John Gordon. [18] [19] The couple,aged 18 and 17 years respectively,moved into Elizabeth's house at 58 State Circle,Annapolis. [10] [20]
The marriage was announced in the Maryland Gazette on April 27,1748:
Last Thursday the Honourable Benedict Calvert,Esq.,Collector of His Majesty's customs for Patuxent District,etc.,was married to Miss Elizabeth Calvert,only surviving Daughter of the late Honourable Charles Calvert,Esq.,deceased,former Governor of this province. [21]
In 1751 Calvert's father Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore died,leaving his illegitimate son the 10,000-acre (40 km2) estate of Anne Arundel Manor in Anne Arundel County. Unfortunately,Lord Baltimore's legitimate son and heir,Frederick Calvert,6th Baron Baltimore,successfully challenged the will and invalidated Benedict's bequest,apparently worth £288 per annum. [22]
Despite the loss of his father's bequest,Calvert's career progressed steadily. In 1755 he became a Judge of the Land Office,sitting alongside his former guardian Dr. George H. Steuart. [10] [23] The Land Office had been created in 1715 to resolve disputes over title to land in the colony. [24]
By 1761 Calvert was wealthy enough to commission formal portraits of his four children:Rebecca,Charles and the twins Eleanor and Elizabeth,by the Maryland portrait painter John Hesselius,three of which are today a part of the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. [25] [26]
In 1769 his half-sister Caroline Calvert married Robert Eden (the last royal governor and ancestor of Anthony Eden,British Prime Minister) who in the same year succeeded Governor Horatio Sharpe as Governor of Maryland. Eden and Calvert shared a love of horse racing [27] and Benedict Swingate Calvert would soon find himself appointed to the Governor's Council. [28]
In 1751 Calvert inherited a 4,000-acre (16 km2) plantation known as Mount Airy, [10] originally a hunting lodge for his great-grandfather Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore, [29] near Upper Marlboro in Prince George's County,Maryland,where he grew tobacco. [30] Mount Airy was most likely a gift from his father,Lord Baltimore,who had ensured that Calvert would be provided with lands and revenues. [31] Calvert began construction on the house at Mount Airy in 1751,expanding it considerably,to create the house which still survives today. [32] Building continued in spite of a fire,rumored to be arson,in 1752. [33]
By the 1770s Benedict Swingate Calvert controlled a large and profitable estate of around 4,000 acres (16 km2),with upwards of 150 slaves. He was also an enthusiastic horse breeder,training thoroughbreds and running them in competitions in Maryland and Virginia. [27]
According to the writer Abbe Robin,who travelled through Maryland during the Revolutionary War,men of Calvert's class and status enjoyed considerable wealth and prosperity:
[Maryland houses] are large and spacious habitations,widely separated,composed of a number of buildings and surrounded by plantations extending farther than the eye can reach,cultivated...by unhappy black men whom European avarice brings hither...Their furniture is of the most costly wood,and rarest marbles,enriched by skilful and artistic work. Their elegant and light carriages are drawn by finely bred horses,and driven by richly apparelled slaves. [28]
In 1774,Calvert's daughter Eleanor Calvert (1758–1811),married John Parke Custis,son of Martha Washington and the stepson of George Washington. Washington himself did not approve of the match owing to the couple's youth,but eventually gave his consent, [30] [32] and was present at the wedding celebrations,which took place at Mount Airy. [33]
As a member of the Maryland political establishment,Calvert was a Loyalist,and he soon found himself on the losing side of the Revolutionary War,the consequences of which would effectively end his political career. The Annapolis Convention of 1774 to 1776 would see the old Maryland elite overthrown,and Calvert,Eden and Steuart would all lose their political power.
In 1774,as collector of customs for the Patuxent River,Calvert wrote to the British authorities,describing the burning of The Peggy Stewart on October 19,1774,the event which became known as the "Annapolis Tea Party". [34]
On May 13,1777,Calvert was forced to resign his position as Judge of the Land Office. [35] As the conflict grew,Calvert became fearful of his family's safety,writing in late 1777 that his family "has been made so uneasy by these frequent outrages" that he wished to "remove my family and property where I can get protection". [36]
Calvert did not leave Maryland,nor did he involve himself in the fighting,even though many other Maryland Loyalists went on to form a Maryland Loyalists Battalion. On occasion Calvert supplied the Continental Army with food and provisions.
In spite of the war,on June 15,1780,Calvert's daughter Elizabeth was married to Charles Steuart,son of Calvert's benefactor George H. Steuart,at Mount Airy. [37]
After the war's end,Calvert had to pay triple taxes as did other Loyalists,but he was never forced to sign the loyalty oath and his lands and property remained unconfiscated. [38]
Calvert's Loyalism does not appear to have affected his cordial relations with the leader of the Revolution,George Washington. Most likely this was because of the marriage in 1774 of Washington's stepson to Calvert's daughter. In 1783,after the war was over,Washington stayed with the Calverts at their Mount Airy plantation,shortly after resigning his commission in Annapolis on December 23. [38] Because Calvert was a known Loyalist,the visit drew much criticism from Washington's political enemies. [39]
Benedict and Elizabeth Calvert had thirteen children,many of whom died in childhood or infancy: [40]
Benedict Swingate Calvert died at Mount Airy on January 9,1788. [19] He was buried beneath the chancel of the church of St Thomas in Croom,Prince George's County,Maryland,a church which Calvert had helped to found and maintain. [21]
Calvert's descendants continued to live at the Mount Airy plantation house until the early 20th century. In 1973,it was acquired by the State of Maryland and became Rosaryville State Park. [44]
Benedict Swingate Calvert (c. 1730–1798) | Father: Charles Calvert,5th Baron Baltimore | Paternal Grandfather: Benedict Calvert,4th Baron Baltimore | Paternal Great-grandfather: Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore |
Paternal Great-grandmother: Jane Lowe | |||
Paternal Grandmother: Charlotte Lee,Lady Baltimore | Paternal Great-grandfather: Edward Lee,1st Earl of Lichfield | ||
Paternal Great-grandmother: Charlotte Lee,Countess of Lichfield | |||
Mother: Unknown. Speculatively,Melusina von der Schulenburg,Countess of Walsingham (1693–1778) | Maternal Grandfather: George I of Great Britain | Maternal Great-grandfather: Ernest Augustus,Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg | |
Maternal Great-grandmother: Sophia of Hanover | |||
Maternal Grandmother: Melusine von der Schulenburg,Duchess of Kendal | Maternal Great-grandfather: Gustavus Adolphus Baron von der Schulenberg | ||
Maternal Great-grandmother: Petronella Ottilie Baroness von Schwencken |
The Calverts' house at 58 State Circle,Annapolis,was the subject of an archaeological dig in the 1980s and early 1990s. The results of the dig,along with much other research,were published in 1994 by Anne Elizabeth Yentsch in her book A Chesapeake Family and their Slaves,published by Cambridge University Press. The excavation of the Calvert House was financed by Historic Annapolis Inc,the National Endowment for the Humanities,and other institutions. [45]
Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland, 23rd Proprietary Governor of Maryland was a British official and the last colonial Governor of Maryland. Although a popular governor and an able administrator, Eden's authority was overthrown by the events of the American Revolution, and in June 1776 he was invited by the Maryland Convention to leave for England. Eden was well-regarded at home and in the same year, 1776, he was made a baronet. He eventually returned to Maryland where he died in 1784 at the age of 42. He was buried in Annapolis and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Frederick, a noted author.
Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, was a British nobleman and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. He inherited the title to Maryland aged just fifteen, on the death of his father and grandfather, when the colony was restored by the British Monarchy to the Calvert family's control, following its seizure in 1688. In 1721 Charles came of age and assumed personal control of Maryland, travelling there briefly in 1732. For most of his life, he remained in England, where he pursued an active career in politics, rising to become Lord of the Admiralty from 1742 to 1744. He died in 1751 in England, aged 52.
Charles Benedict Calvert was an American politician who was a U.S. Representative from the sixth district of Maryland, serving one term from 1861 to 1863. He was an early backer of the inventors of the telegraph, and in 1856 he founded the Maryland Agricultural College, the first agricultural research college in America, now known as the University of Maryland. He was a direct descendant of the Lords Baltimore, proprietary governors of the Province of Maryland from 1631 until 1776.
Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, known as Nelly, was a granddaughter of Martha Washington and a step-granddaughter and adopted daughter of George Washington.
The Maryland Loyalists Battalion, referred to in Captain Caleb Jones's orderly book as the First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists, was a British provincial regiment of colonial American Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War.
John Parke Custis was an American planter. He was a son of Martha Washington and stepson of George Washington.
George Henry Calvert was an American editor, essayist, dramatist, poet, and biographer. He was the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the newly established College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Baltimore, and in 1854 he served as Mayor of Newport, Rhode Island.
Benedict Leonard Calvert was the 15th Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1727 through 1731, appointed by his older brother, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751). He was named after his father, Benedict Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore (1679–1715). Calvert had tuberculosis and died from it on board the family ship, The Charles, on 1 June 1732, while returning to his home in England, aged 31.
Rosaryville State Park is a public recreation area with historical features located three miles southeast of Joint Base Andrews in Rosaryville, Prince George's County, Maryland. The state park includes the restored Mount Airy Mansion, which is operated as an event facility, as well as hiking, biking and equestrian trails for day-use.
George Hume Steuart, (1700–1784) was a Scottish physician, tobacco planter, and Loyalist politician in colonial Maryland. Born in Perthshire, Steuart emigrated to Maryland in around 1721, where he benefited from proprietarial patronage and was appointed to a number of colonial offices, eventually becoming a wealthy landowner with estates in both Maryland and Scotland, and serving two terms as mayor of Annapolis. However, he was forced by the outbreak of the American Revolution to decide whether to remain loyal to the Crown or to throw in his lot with the American rebels. In 1775 Steuart sailed to Scotland, deciding at age 75 that "he could not turn rebel in his old age". He remained there until his death in 1784.
Martha Parke Custis Peter was a granddaughter of Martha Dandridge Washington and a step-granddaughter of George Washington.
Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart, born Eleanor Calvert, was a prominent member of the wealthy Calvert family of Maryland. Upon her marriage to John Parke Custis, she became the daughter-in-law of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington and the stepdaughter-in-law of George Washington. Her portrait hangs today at Mount Airy Mansion in Rosaryville State Park, Maryland.
Captain Charles Calvert was the 14th Proprietary Governor of Maryland in 1720, at a time when the Calvert family had recently regained control of their proprietary colony. He was appointed governor by his cousin Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, who in 1721 came into his inheritance. Calvert worked to reassert the Proprietary interest against the privileges of the colonists as set out in the Maryland Charter, and to ease tensions between the Lords Baltimore and their subjects. Religious tension, which had been a source of great division in the colony, was much reduced under his governorship. Captain Calvert was replaced as governor in 1727 by his cousin Benedict Leonard Calvert, though he continued to occupy other colonial offices. He suffered from early senility and died in 1734.
"Maryland Square", later known as "Steuart Hall", was a mansion owned by the Steuart family from 1795 to 1861, located on the western outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, at the present-day junction of West Baltimore and Monroe streets. In the first year of the American Civil War, the property was confiscated by the United States Federal Government as its owner, George H. Steuart, a former United States Army officer, had resigned his commission to fight in the Confederate Army, in the Army of Northern Virginia as a brigadier general.
The Steuart family of Maryland was a prominent political family in the early History of Maryland. Of Scottish descent, the Steuarts have their origins in Perthshire, Scotland. The family grew wealthy in the early 18th century under the patronage of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland, but would see their wealth and status much reduced during the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.
Elizabeth Calvert was the daughter of Maryland Governor Captain Charles Calvert and Rebecca Gerard, and a wealthy heiress in colonial Maryland. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her their substantial fortune. In 1748, aged 17, she married her cousin Benedict Swingate Calvert, a Loyalist politician and planter and the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore. Benedict's connections to the ruling Calvert family allowed him to benefit from considerable proprietarial patronage, until the American Revolution saw the overthrow of British rule and the end of Calvert power in Maryland. Benedict and Elizabeth had to pay triple taxes after the war's end but, unlike many loyalists, their lands and fortune remained unconfiscated.
Rosalie Stier Calvert was a plantation owner and correspondent in nineteenth century Maryland. A collection of her letters, titled Mistress of Riversdale, The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1991. The letters range in date from 1795 to 1821, and illuminate the life of Calvert's plantation household, including the events leading up to and during the War of 1812.
George Calvert, was a plantation owner and slaveholder in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Maryland. His plantation house, Riversdale plantation, also known as the Calvert Mansion, is a five-part, large-scale late Georgian mansion with superior Federal interior, built between 1801 and 1807, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. Calvert's wife, the Belgian-born heiress Rosalie Stier Calvert, was an indefatigable correspondent whose letters, titled Mistress of Riversdale, The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1991. The letters range in date from 1795 to 1821, and illuminate the life of the Calverts' plantation household during the events leading up to and during the War of 1812.
William Steuart was a wealthy planter in colonial Maryland. He inherited the estate of Dodon in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, from his father, planter and politician George H. Steuart.
Onorio Razzolini (1699-1769) was an Italian immigrant to colonial Maryland. He is thought to be the first immigrant of Italian descent to hold public office in the North American colonies. He enjoyed the patronage of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, proprietary governor of the Province of Maryland, serving as tutor to his illegitimate son, Benedict Swingate Calvert. After enjoying a successful career in Maryland, including serving as Armourer and Keeper of the Stores of Maryland, Razzolini returned to his native town of Asolo, where he married and had three daughters.